4 - Elite and Specialized
from CENTRES OF EXCHANGE AND BODIES OF PRINT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
Summary
Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the life-blood of real civilization.
(Trevelyan, English Social History, 1942)The aim of the Residencia therefore is to awaken curiosity – a faculty lacking in many Spaniards – to arouse a desire to learn and the power to form personal judgements instead of accepting what other people say. Only a real passion for truth and justice can lead to the development of those habits of toleration and social solidarity which are the only hope for the future of Spain and all other countries.
(Trend, A Picture of Modern Spain, 1921)Esta curiosidad, que va lo mismo al pensamiento o la poesía que al acontecimiento público y al secreto rumbo de las naciones, es, bajo su aspecto de dispersión e indisciplina, la más natural, la más orgánica. Es la curiosidad ni exclusivamente estética ni especialmente científica o política. Es la vital curiosidad que el individuo de nervios alerta siente por el vasto germinar de la vida en torno y es el deseo de vivir cara a cara con la honda realidad contemporánea.
(Ortega, ‘Propósitos’, first number of the Revista de Occidente, July 1923)As observed by Collini (1991: 56), the activity of journals, and specifically that of the journal essay, is something that constructs an imagined intellectual community in a highly specific way, in that it assumes that the reader has read what has gone before. Only subtle hints and references are needed, therefore, to allude to an accumulating body of knowledge (and, one might assume, a canon of accepted ideas and discourses).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Trafficking Knowledge in Early Twentieth-Century SpainCentres of Exchange and Cultural Imaginaries, pp. 65 - 94Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009